Many local websites start today with the news that Shanghai is moving ahead to get Disneyland to open a park in the city. “Shanghai wants to build a Disney park and has hoped for a longtime to do so. But we can’t be sure when construction work will begin,’’ Shanghai’s mayor Mr Han Zheng said on Tuesday in Beijing. “Shanghai has the right conditions to build a park, and we’re carrying forward all aspects of the preparatory work.” .

But the mayor cannot make a decision on such a big project himself, only China’s State Council can do that. So it might just be part of Shanghai’s lobbying campaign to get approval for the park. Beijing apparently is also interested in a park, and the more publicity for Shanghai the more difficult it will be for Beijing to get into the race.

It is not the first time the building of a Shanghai Disneyland is reported, last year August, just before Hong Kong Disneyland opened its doors, there were also similar rumours. That time the plan was for a 500 hectare park, now the plans are for a 1000 hectare site close to Pudong airport. As a reference, Hong Kong Disneyland is only 126 hectares.

Road work (see post below) may be annoying, but having people cry outside your apartment building every day is probably worse. This is what’s happening to residents in Jia’an apartments on Wanping Lu, two streets to the east of my apartment. What happened is that a restaurant opposite the compound is offering funeral dinners, and several mourning parties are held there every day now. Following Chinese customs, relatives of the dead dress in white and burn paper houses and money before the dinner, which also involves lots of crying and loud music. Not the nicest thing to have below your window. And because funerals are considered unlucky this makes it even worse for superstitious residents.

For the past 2 nights I did not sleep that well, because road work was going on Caoxi Bei Lu, the main street close to my apartment. This morning the Shanghai Daily learned me what is going on, the road will be widened from 8 to 10 lanes. From Grand Gateway to Nan Dan Lu the street is already 10 lanes (see picture taken from my kitchen), but after Nan Dan Lu it is just 8 lanes. The work should be finished within 2 months, which is quite a long time for China.

A survey by Shanghai-based CBP Career Consultants (China’s first career consulting company, set up in June 2004) shows that 52% of all Shanghai office workers has a weblog. And an additional 28% is thinking about setting up a blog. I am not sure how representative this survey is, because this seems an astonishingly high figure to me.

During the past weeks I did many job interviews with candidates for positions at Spill Group Asia, and most of them I asked if they have a weblog. Only about 1 in 5 told me they have one, but of course they may lie about this because their blogs may show a different side of them than they want to show me.

Interesting is also that an amazing 60% of the bloggers does not hesitate to blog about their frustations with their boss. I seems to be time to find out who of my employees has a blog, to see what they have to write about me 🙂

My former employer DaimlerChrysler has also jumped on the podcasting bandwagon and has started to produce podcasts to reach its customers. They have both video-podcasts (about dance, music, sports and design and of course full of product information) and audio-podcasts (an English language music program). The website in German can be found here.

Mercedes-Benz Italia also has its own (video)podcast, they introduce it as follows:
Benvenuti nel podcast Mercedes-Benz! State entrando in un universo di passione ed esclusività. Scoprite i nostri modelli, punte d’eccellenza nelle loro categorie, dalle berline compatte alle limousine, passando per i roadster e le sportivissime coupé.
I downloaded the first episode, it’s the commercial for the new M-Class. They also have one online for the R-Class.

You can directly subscribe to all of Mercedes-Benz’ podcasts through iTunes, just do a search for Mercedes-Benz.

I am glad to see that they are doing this, as many of you know I am a big fan of podcasting and I think it is an excellent (and cheap) way to reach your target group. In case any of my former colleagues at DaimlerChrysler China should read this and also wants to start a local podcast, please contact me and we can help you to set up a feed for this at Toodou.com

I like a bit of fresh air in the morning (if you can call the air in Shanghai fresh of course), but taxi drivers seem to be much bigger fans than I am. Whatever temperature it is, and whether it rains or not, they tend to open at least one window during the ride.

This morning was an extreme case: the driver that came to my place to pick me up, was sitting in his car reading the newspaper with all four windows open. And it was only 3 degrees outside! I assumed he would put the windows up when driving off, but I was wrong. In order not to end up with pneunomia I decided to do close the windows in the back seat myself and I asked the driver to do the same with the front ones. He reluctantly did so, but left his own window half open. Some things I will probably never understand.

Whether he likes it or not, Toodou’s Gary Wang is becoming a real star in China. This month he was featured in the Chinese version of Esquire magazine, in an article about Web2.0. The picture from the article can be found here. Esquire’s website is here. That reminds me, I don’t have your autograph yet Gary!